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WASTE 


JOHN  KELMAN 
D.D. 


V 


^^^F  P^\NCifd^ 


AUG    28  1979 


BV42.53 

.K21W?" 


WAST 


AU6    " 


'^EOLOGXAL  StV^ 


A  SERMON 

Delivered  in  the 

Fifth  Avenue  Presbyterian  Church 

New  York  City 

Sunday,  April  3,  1921 


By  the  Pastor,  the 

REV.  JOHN  KELMAN 

D.D. 


Printed  by  the  Fifth  Avenue  Presbyterian  Church 


WASTE 

''She  poured  it  upon  His  head:'  Matthew  26:7 
''He  hath  poured  out  His  soul."  Isaiah  53:12 


IN  the  exquisite  story  of  St.  Matthew  we  see  the 
woman  following  her  characteristic  impulse. 
Love  and  forgiveness  had  made  Jesus  precious 
beyond  all  the  world  to  her,  and  there  was  no 
abandonment  of  generosity  too  lavish  for  her  great 
heart.  As  her  gift  was  without  preparation  so  it 
was  without  after-thought,  a  thing  to  remain  at 
the  very  topmost  point  of  grateful  memory,  which 
no  need  nor  poverty  that  might  come  to  her  would 
ever  tempt  her  to  regret. 

The  disciples,  whose  conduct  has  been  so  much 
criticized,  said  exactly  what  might  have  been  ex- 
pected of  them.  These  fishermen  were  no  judges 
of  perfume,  though  they  were  very  good  judges 
indeed  of  poverty.  They  knew  exactly  what  was 
in  the  bag  and  how  far  it  would  go,  alike  for  their 
needs  and  their  charities.  Neither  were  they 
judges  of  refined  sentiment,  such  as  moved  this 
woman's  heart  to  her  great  deed.  They  were 
practical  men,  very  masculine  indeed — crudely 
masculine.  They  had  been  much  troubled  by 
sentimental  people  who  frequently  hampered  what 
they  took  to  be  their  business,  but  this  was  really 
too  much.  Their  margins  were  always  narrow  and 
every  penny  counted.  Here  were  two  hundred 
pence  gone  for  nothing.     So  far  as  they  could  see 


there  was  nothing  whatever  to  show  for  this  most 
rash  expenditure.  You  will  note  that  it  was  not 
only  Judas,  but  also  the  good  disciples  who  spoke 
and  thought  like  this.  They  had  much  to  say  for 
themselves.  Thrift  is  an  obvious  virtue,  especially 
to  unimaginative  minds.  Political  economy  was 
behind  them  in  their  sentiment  about  luxuries  of 
this  kind,  although  they  did  not  know  that  this 
was  so. 

Turning  now  from  the  woman  and  the  disciples 
both  we  find  the  critics  of  life  echoing  their  language. 
If  the  disciples  had  much  to  say  for  themselves  these 
critics  have  more  to  say.  There  is  the  obvious 
wastefulness  of  nature.  Think  of  the  seed  scat- 
tered upon  the  ground  or  upon  the  salt  and  barren 
sea.  For  one  seed  that  takes  root  and  achieves  any 
future  whatever  there  must  be  countless  grains 
that  perish  every  spring-time.  Think  of  the 
dust  that  blows  about  the  world — debris  of  man's 
handiwork  and  of  the  ancient  rocks.  Think 
of  the  power  running  to  waste  in  all  imagin- 
able fashions,  where  water  is  plunging  down  a 
mountain-side  or  the  waves  of  the  sea  are  rocking. 
If  the  critics  of  nature  be  poetically  minded,  they 
may  add  to  these  the  enormous  waste  of  beauty 
that  there  is  in  desert  sunsets  and  in  mountain 
flowers,  which  blaze  and  bloom  by  the  million  with 
never  an  eye  to  see  them. 

It  is  true  that  science  shows  unexpected  laws  of 
recovery.  Her  revelation  of  the  conservation  of 
energy  and  the  transmutation  of  one  form  of  force 
into  another  is  a  heartening  and  suggestive  thought. 
Aided  by  man's  arrangements  she  will  turn  heat 
into   light  and  weight  into  driving  power.     She 


will  make  countless  changes  of  a  similar  kind,  so 
that  what  is  lost  in  one  form  may  be  gained  more 
or  less  in  another.  Yet  all  compensations  are  very- 
partial,  and  the  best  machine  that  man  ever  made 
is  but  a  wasteful  mechanism. 

When  we  come  to  the  human  story,  the  wasteful- 
ness is  not  less  in  extent  and  is  infinitely  more 
terrible  in  tragedy.  It  would  seem  as  if  the  great 
river  of  humanity  were  streaming  out  forever  to 
the  sea,  accomplishing  but  a  fraction  of  its  possible 
purpose,  and  for  the  most  part  futile  and  inef- 
fective. Thoughtful  writers  are  continually  re- 
minding us  of  the  wastefulness  of  history,  and  com- 
plaining of  the  incalculable  loss,  both  to  utility  and 
beauty,  which  has  been  caused  by  no  necessary 
law  of  nature  whatsoever,  but  by  the  sheer  de- 
structiveness  of  man  in  all  generations. 

That  no  doubt  has  greatly  impoverished  the 
world,  but  the  place  at  which  we  meet  it  is  in  our 
own  life  and  experience.  Here  we  are  confronted, 
first  of  all,  with  the  wastefulness  of  death.  Every- 
one who  took  part  in  the  great  war  was  impressed 
with  this  more  than  perhaps  with  any  other  ele- 
ment in  it.  A  visit  to  the  ravaged  fields  of  France 
and  Flanders  shows  like  a  walk  through  some 
deserted  dumping-ground  of  broken  stone  and 
iron  and  charred  remains  of  wood.  The  very 
earth  has  been  torn  to  ribbons,  and  everywhere 
over  vast  territories  the  labors  of  centuries  have 
been  reduced  to  a  rubbish-heap.  The  sea  is  as 
full  of  this  trouble  as  the  land,  and  no  thoughtful 
man  can  refrain  from  asking  to  what  purpose  is  the 
waste  of  all  those  tons  of  iron  and  of  all  the  in- 
ventions and  labors  of  men  that  lie  paving  the 


bottom  of  so  many  oceans.  Nor  is  this  waste  of 
force  and  materials  only.  Throughout  all  the 
battle-fields  and  in  the  slime  of  the  deepest  sea, 
millions  of  men,  who  ten  years  ago  lived  lives  full 
of  strength  and  promise,  have  left  their  bodies 
sinking  swift  to  decay.  But  it  is  not  only  the 
war  in  which  we  see  this  process.  Everywhere  all 
around  us  the  story  is  the  same.  The  infant  mor- 
tality of  our  cities  is  one  of  the  most  pressing  prob- 
lems of  modern  civilization.  In  China  and  in 
Europe  men  and  women  and  their  offspring  are 
dying  by  the  million  from  famine  and  disease. 
Some  of  these  have  made  little  contribution  to  the 
world,  and  given  little  promise  of  making  any  if 
they  were  spared,  but  all  around  us  we  see  the  un- 
regardfulness  of  death.  A  great  surgeon  suddenly 
cut  off  carries  with  him  powers  and  secrets  that 
were  ameliorating  life  and  saving  it.  A  great 
linguist  when  he  dies  shuts  off  from  the  earth  the 
fruit  of  a  life- time's  years  of  patient  study.  A 
great  statesman  carries  to  the  grave  not  only  the 
secrets  of  past  diplomacy,  but  the  powers  which 
might  have  blessed  the  future  world.  To  make 
up  for  such  waste,  thousands  of  young  men  and 
women  will  have  continually  and  painfully  to  toil 
once  more  over  the  same  ground  in  order  that  some 
part  of  the  loss  may  be  regained.  But  one's  heart 
is  sore  when  one  remembers  the  books  unwritten 
and  the  work  undone,  and  the  insensate  costliness 
of  it  all. 

But  we  do  not  need  to  think  of  death  in  order  to 
realize  something  of  this  depressing  waste.  Life 
itself  is  wasteful  in  countless  ways.  Vast  numbers 
of  people  have  somehow  got  into  the  wrong  voca- 


tion  in  life  and  found  themselves  fixed  in  situations 
in  which  they  will  never  do  their  best.  By  some 
mistaken  choice  or  wrong  guidance,  by  some  un- 
fortunate drift  of  circumstances,  they  sHp  into 
their  profession  without  sufficient  consideration 
of  their  powers.  Now  they  are  tied  down  to  condi- 
tions in  which  they  will  never  fulfill  the  richest 
possibilities  of  their  lives.  Upon  such  people 
there  comes  at  times  a  spirit  of  fierce  rebellion,  and 
they  envy  anyone  who  is  where  he  obviously  ought 
to  be,  and  is  facing  tasks  for  which  he  is  fitted. 

Similarly,  there  are  countless  cases  of  wasted 
possibilities  of  love  in  homes  where  some  misun- 
derstanding or  lack  of  appreciation,  or  neglect  of 
duties,  has  silenced  the  voice  and  killed  the  ardor 
of  hearts  that  might  have  been  warm  and  glad. 
There  are  those  weakened  by  long  illness  and 
hindered  through  weary  months  and  years  from 
doing  work  which  calls  them  continually.  Splen- 
did powers  of  service  are  laid  aside  and  in  abeyance. 
The  bugles  are  blowing,  but  they  cannot  join  the 
army,  and  it  does  not  seem  as  if  there  were  any 
compensation  for  them  in  the  inevitable  retire- 
ment to  which  they  are  condemned.  In  all  our 
prisons  there  is  an  enormous  quantity  of  cleverness 
and  even  of  character  lost  to  society.  Some  sud- 
den temptation  or  some  set  of  adverse  circum- 
stances swept  the  prisoner  into  crime,  and  so  ruined 
his  chances.  It  would  be  impossible  to  estimate  the 
amount  of  waste  for  which  this  stands  in  our  modern 
civilization.  Besides  all  this,  in  quite  ordinary 
places  and  in  unsuspected  quarters  there  are  broken- 
hearted men  and  women  who,  from  one  reason  or 
another,  appear  to  have  lost  their  place  in  the 


world  and  their  chance  in  life.  They  once  aspired 
to  high  things,  but  their  souls  are  slowly  dying  or 
being  killed  within  them. 

When  we  think  of  all  this — the  unrequited  love, 
the  lost  labor,  the  wasted  powers,  the  vain  anxieties 
— it  would  seem  as  if  the  majority  of  human  facts 
were  unavailing.  Men  and  women  are  fighting, 
toiling,  living,  dying  in  the  dark,  in  a  struggle 
which  is  pathetically  brave,  but  which  appears  to 
be  as  useless  as  it  is  courageous.  As  they  watch 
the  waste  of  vitality,  labor,  suffering  and  love, 
they  grow  bitter  and  they  say  bitter  things.  Their 
quarrel  is  not  with  pain  but  with  the  uselessness  of 
it  all.  God  is  great,  doubtless,  but  He  is  wasteful. 
There  is  not  even  the  apparent  recovery  or  the 
partial  recovery  which  nature  shows  and  science 
reveals.  They  have  found  as  yet  no  satisfying 
spiritual  interpretation  for  the  tragedy  of  life  in 
which  they  are  involved.  With  uncomprehending 
hearts  they  repeat  the  old  question.  To  what 
purpose  is  this  waste? 

To  all  these,  and  to  ourselves  who  have  gone 
among  their  company  when  we  were  silenced  by 
the  appalling  aspect  of  life,  and  when  the  darkness 
was  falling  upon  all  hope  and  faith  that  once  en- 
couraged us,  this  morning  there  comes  sounding 
down  through  the  gathering  dark  a  voice  from  very 
ancient  days.  He  hath  poured  out  His  soul^  it 
cries.  We  look  around  the  field  of  wreckage  in 
which  we  stand,  the  wreckage  of  the  broken  hopes 
of  men  and  women,  and  find  one  thing  still 
erect  amid  it  all,  the  tall  cross  of  Calvary.  There 
we  see  the  huge  wound  and  leakage  of  the  world, 
a  waste  compared  with   which  all  other  extrava- 

8 


gance  sinks  out  of  sight.  Jesus  was  wasted.  Who 
valued  Him  during  those  priceless  years?  Who 
knew  the  worth  of  His  wisdom,  the  majesty  of  His 
Kingdom,  the  preciousness  of  His  life?  Truly 
the  world  knew  Him  not.  He  came  unto  His  own 
and  His  own  received  Him  not.  There  upon 
Calvary  the  royal  wine  of  His  blood  was  poured 
out  upon  the  barren  sands.  He  hath  poured  out 
His  soul  indeed.  As  His  blood  sank  into  the 
ground  beneath  the  cross,  so  all  that  He  stood  for 
and  had  striven  to  do  for  men  seemed  to  vanish. 
Never  in  all  the  lavish  history  of  the  world  was 
there  any  such  spectacle  of  waste  as  that  of  Calvary. 
Yet  the  astonished  world  has  discovered  that  in 
the  end  nothing  of  all  that  He  spent  was  wasted. 
Where  is  the  spilt  blood  of  Christ  today?  Not  lost 
upon  the  sands  of  Palestine,  but  found  upon  the 
guilty  hearts  of  countless  sinners.  Where  is  the 
love  that  seemed  so  vainly  spent  upon  those  who 
did  not  want  it?  It  was  set  free  by  the  cross  to 
reappear  in  the  love  and  service  and  sacrifice  which 
are  slowly  changing  the  selfish  heart  of  the  world. 
The  end  is  not  yet,  and  there  is  much  to  vex  and 
to  alarm  us  still.  Yet  everjrwhere  this  is  true,  that 
Jesus  Christ  has  set  the  ocean  of  God's  love  flowing, 
until  today  it  laves  every  shore.  There  is  no  corner 
in  all  the  world  that  it  has  not  approached.  In 
every  land  there  are  countless  men  and  women  who 
have  brought  their  sin  to  His  healing  waters,  and 
the  love  of  God  is  taking  away  the  sin  of  the  world. 
They  have  felt  the  sorrows  of  the  cross  bring  Jesus 
to  them  in  every  sorrow  of  their  own.  They  have 
brought  to  Him  their  broken  work  and  all  the  dis- 
couragement of  their  failure,  and  been  able  to  take 


heart  again  and  go  on  in  spite  of  the  knowledge 
that  they  would  never  attain  to  more  than  a  frag- 
ment of  their  purposes.  It  has  touched  the  death 
of  the  world  and  it  is  not  only  His  grave  that  has 
let  its  prisoner  go  free.  A  voice  has  cried  to  all  the 
dead,  and  life  more  abundant  than  the  life  they 
lost  revitalizes  the  spirit  of  believers.  Oh,  I  ap- 
peal to  you,  derelict  spirits,  that  feel  yourselves 
flung  high  and  dry  above  the  receding  tides  of  life, 
that  tide  of  love  and  hope  is  risen  to  your  level. 
The  love  of  Jesus,  the  love  of  Calvary,  it  is  lapping 
round  your  heart.  It  will  reach  you  yet,  if  you 
will. 

It  is  quite  evident  that  all  this  teaches  us  a  great 
secret  about  life.  Christ  neither  lived  nor  died  for 
Himself  alone.  As  in  the  resurrection,  so  it  was  in  all 
else  that  He  did.  He  was  a  first  fruit  of  the  race, 
pouring  out  His  soul  in  a  wastefulness  more  ap- 
palling than  that  which  is  discouraging  and  dead- 
ening faith  through  all  the  centuries.  He  threw 
Himself  away  with  the  very  lavishness  of  God,  in  a 
larger  and  more  generous  spirit  of  abandonment  than 
has  ever  been  conceived  by  man.  He  has  proclaimed 
to  all  the  victims  of  life's  wastefulness,  that,  if 
they  will,  it  pays  in  the  end.  In  Him  we  see  our- 
selves written  large  in  this  great  tragedy  that  has 
come  upon  us  all.  We  too,  if  we  will  but  catch 
His  inspiration  and  believe  His  love,  may  pour  out 
our  soul  and  know  that  it  is  not  in  vain.  It  is 
not  lost,  that  precious  sacrifice  that  you  have 
made.  Somewhere  in  God's  great  universe  it  is 
gathered  again  and  set  in  its  appropriate  place. 
There  is  no  waste  of  anything  at  all  within  the 
bounds  of  His  faith  and  love.    There  is  only  a 

lo 


change  into  something  richer  and  more  precious. 
Let  it  go,  my  brother,  my  sister — your  life  and  ail 
its  burden  of  promise  and  of  faith.  Let  it  go,  and 
its  disappearing  streams  will  reappear  in  purer 
waters  and  more  powerful  current  in  God's  good 
time. 

Let  us  return  for  a  moment  to  the  woman  of  the 
story.  Have  we  any  precious  ointment  to  bring 
to  our  dying  Master?  Can  we  not  join  her  as  she 
pours  the  most  costly  thing  she  has  upon  His 
head?  Let  us  give  Him  what  we  have.  It  is 
all  we  can  do  and  it  is  all  He  asks.  The  life  that 
seems  wasted,  the  fortune  and  wealth,  the  love  and 
hope.  The  best  economy  for  these  is  to  spend 
them  all  on  Him.  No  labor,  life,  pain  which  is 
given  in  love  to  Jesus  Christ  is  really  lost.  In 
some  cases  it  may  be  an  active  and  conscious 
sacrifice  of  our  own  opportunities  and  possessions 
for  the  furtherance  of  His  Kingdom.  In  other 
cases  it  may  be  simply  the  acceptance  of  life  as  it 
is,  and  the  willing  surrender  of  much  that  has  been 
very  dear  to  us.  In  either  case  there  is  in  His 
acceptance  no  waste  at  all.  /  know  Whom  I  have 
believed  and  am  persuaded  that  He  is  able  to  keep 
that  which  I  have  committed  unto  Him  against  that 
day. 


II 


DATE  DUE                           1 

r 

CAYLORD 

PAINTED  INUS. A. 

